Fox in the Henhouse

Question: Recently I've been trying to stat up Inari-no-okami for the Kami and I've run into a problem. The three associations needed for Legend 12 are easy (Animal (Fox), Magic and Fertility), but beyond that I'm having trouble distinguishing between things Inari itself does and things its kitsune messengers do, such as shapeshifting or power over fire and lightning. What do you think? Should Inari have Illusion, Fire or Sky, or do its kitsune have a wider variety of powers than it does?

Well, to start with, we agree: Animal (Fox), Fertility and Magic are totally in Inari's wheelhouse. Let's go from there!

First of all, because you bring it up a lot in your question obliquely, it's always worthwhile to talk about Inari's gender, because there is a whole ton of confusion and misinformation and interpretation that goes into how that particular deity is presented in Japanese mythology and whether or not it can be called male, female, or gender-fluid or changeable. English-language studies on Inari, especially older ones, tend to refer to the god as male most of the time; most likely this is because those writing those studies were European outsiders who were inclined to apply a fixed gender to all deities they studied, and who gravitated naturally toward males unless a god was specifically said to be female. Many - in fact most - of the other gods of Shinto are specific and unchanging in their gender, which is often a major part of their stories, but Inari is frequently referred to as either masculine or feminine, indeterminate, or capable of changing between those options at will. Inari's not one of the oldest gods of Shinto (our first confirmed dates are in the early eighth century), but old enough that modern, heavily Buddhist ideas of gender roles probably weren't strongly in effect yet. Inari's modern form is probably a composite figure composed of several different fertility deities, all of them originally separate local gods but later considered aspects of one - most notably, some scholars conflate Inari with Uke Mochi, although obviously we have her off on her own in Ourea as a Titan Avatar.

But anyway, Inari is a truly gender-fluid deity. Some Scions (and other gods, and mortals) might experience the god as male, others as female, others as having no idea one way or the other or seeing elements of both. Regardless of how your game represents Inari, though, you should probably never use "it" to refer to the god. That suggests no gender at all, which is not applicable here, and while some crusty old scholars use the word because English doesn't have good gender-fluid pronouns, in practice it's probably pretty insulting and Inari probably wouldn't appreciate it. Nobody likes being called by a word that implies they have more in common with objects than people; doing so to refer to a god will probably land you on a divine retribution list pretty quickly, especially if you do it to the god's face.

But, back to Inari's associations! Fire and lightning are tangential associations, even for kitsune; even foxfire isn't really fire but more of an optical illusion, so we wouldn't apply either to Inari. However, the god does do a lot of shapeshifting - in addition to appearing as various genders, Inari also turns up as various animals, monsters and even plants, suggesting that there's no confining the deity to a single shape for long. The eternal problem of how to handle shapeshifting in Scion rears its head again; Appearance probably isn't a great fit, since there aren't very many stories suggesting Inari is more visually crazy than other gods, so we would probably tentatively go with Illusion, since that's not only a kitsune feature but also one that Inari's myths often rely on. Inari also has several shrines dedicated to worshiping the god as a curer of disease and giver of children, which could point to Health, although that seems like an outgrowth of the general prosperity idea and we're not sure it's strong enough for a full association.

That leaves us without any firm Epic Attributes to assign to the god, and without more research than we have time for right now (alas, Japan is still not updated on our site!), we can't give you super firm recommendations. Inari is insanely popular, especially with modern businesses, so you might want to go with Charisma, which might also be supported by the god's association with performance and pleasure; Manipulation might be supported by the stories of Inari intentionally pulling capers and tricks in order to teach people lessons or enjoy their bewilderment. Wits is a general fox characteristic, so while we don't have any good support for it from stories, it might be a stopgap option if you need to take the god live for players before you have time to do a ton of work on it.

Kitsune, as a general magical race of creatures, are very common in folkloric stories and therefore do have an expanded powers thanks to the wide range of stories about them. But Inari is a little more specific and has tales that are all the god's own, so we wouldn't assume that the deity necessarily needs associations for everything the little messengers who serve the god might do.

Celestial Skullduggery

Question: Is my GM's interpretation of Tsuki-yomi as a Machiavellian schemer a la Game of Thrones valid? He recently killed Amaterasu (OOC Knowledge) for reasons never really explained.

Well, it's honestly pretty hard to guess what Tsukuyomi's mythological personality is like, because he doesn't have very many myths with speaking parts. We know how he was born and that he is in charge of the moon and the night sky, and we know that he was so offended by Uke Mochi's method of creating food that he killed her and was summarily exiled for his crime, but we don't know much about what he's like when you're having a conversation with him. Japanese mythology doesn't detail what his sense of humor might be like, what kinds of things he enjoys, what his pet peeves are, how he views the world and his place in it, whether he's homesick, whether he's glad to be exiled or bearing a grudge... none of that is touched on. In our games, we played him as stern and severely dedicated to decorum, but not above getting his hands dirty (or more often, punting a Scion out there to get their hands dirty) when the need arose.

But, that was our game and this is yours, so here's an important rule of thumb: the ST's interpretation of a god's personality should always be trusted. For one thing, this is not an area where you can look up a god's personality in a book and say, "Aha! You're doing it wrong, they should be way more loving/chatty/willing to do X thing I want!" While some gods have clearly demonstrated personalities in their myths and have a sort of generally universally accepted personality type - i.e., Ishtar is likely to pout or throw a tantrum if she doesn't get her way, Zeus is likely to hit on people he finds attractive, Tezcatlipoca is probably doing something terrible to you right now and you don't even know it - many, many more don't. And even if they do, remember that your Storyteller is roleplaying that god, just like they play a zillion other NPCs for you over the course of the game, and their interpretation of a god's personality is as valid as yours might be. If they play Sedna as terrible and cruel to male Scions but warm and welcoming to female ones because they want to play up that her treatment by her husbands and father has made her dislike men, then it's irrelevant that you would have made her uniformly hate everyone regardless of gender and don't agree with that portrayal. Even when everyone has all the facts about a given character's personality, different people will end up playing it differently and highlighting different parts of it. The Storyteller is literally in charge of what that NPC thinks, does and says when interacting with you, and by definition, they are never wrong. If you would have done something different than they did with their portrayal, that's cool, but it's still the truth in the game they are running.

That doesn't mean you can't point something out to your Storyteller if you think they're missing a key piece of information - for example, if the ST has Agni say offhandedly, "Oh, Indra and I get along awesomely, we've never argued about anything," you might mention to them that there was that one time that Indra almost got Agni killed because he refused to let him use a forest for fuel source and it actually turned into a pretty big deal and got a bunch of gods and Scions involved in a turf war. But don't do it in the middle of the action and hold the game up or make your fellow players uncomfortable, and don't do it in a confrontational or accusatory way. We recommend after game or during a break saying, "Hey, I recall reading X myth, did you know that one?" rather than leaping in during game to shout, "Nuh-uh, that's just not true, you don't know what you're talking about!" Storytellers are humans, and they can't know every piece of every mythology ever all the time. Don't punish them if they miss something once in a while.

But that brings us to the other major reason that you don't get to argue with an ST's portrayal of a god's actions or personality, and that's that they're in charge of the game and they know more than you do. There might be a ton of reasons for the way a god is acting that you have no idea about; they could have been mind-whammied by another god, accidentally drunk a potion of forgetfulness, made new friends or enemies over the course of the story, been blackmailed by an enemy into doing things they don't want to, or you might even be talking to someone completely different who is just impersonating the god you think you're talking to. You have no idea, and the ST is not only not going to stop every five minutes to tell you that yes, there's a good reason for this, it would actually be bad for the game if they did, since some secrets are supposed to remain secret unless you figure them out inside the game itself. You need to trust that your ST is portraying any character, not just gods, the way they want them portrayed, and go from there. And really, if you don't trust them to do that, how are you trusting them to run the rest of the game?

Personally, we didn't run Tsukuyomi the way you're describing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that approach is wrong. Considering that Amaterasu banished (and/or possibly divorced) him a very long time ago for something he probably feels justified in doing, it's not outside the realm of possibility that he might be carrying a grudge against her or that he would want to find a way to once again be an important force in the court of the kami that has been denied to him for all these years.

Second Noble Son

Question: Can you think of any associations Tsukuyomi deserves to have beside Moon?

Poor Tsukuyomi. Not only is he sort of stuck out in the cold away from the rest of the pantheon (literally, and permanently), but he also doesn't get very many stories or myths to give him associations, thanks to the fact that he's persona non grata with his ruler/sister/wife and therefore not allowed to do things anymore. That's what he gets for getting himself voted off the island.

Moon, at least, is easy; as Amaterasu is the face of the sun, so her brother Tsukuyomi is the face of the moon. Past that point, we have to get a little more creative if we want him to have any associations, but there are a few we would probably accept. We're actually tentatively cool with him having Darkness; his role as given to him by Izanagi is described in Japanese texts as the ruler of not just the moon but also the night in general, as opposed to Amaterasu as ruler of the day, which would therefore naturally lend itself to giving him the purview of night's darkness and silence. The Nihon Shoki also claims that Izanagi entrusted the sky as a joint domain to both Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, but since neither of them does much with sky-like powers or symbols, I'm not sure if we should give them both that association; the line may just mean in a symbolic sense, since the sun and moon are themselves in the sky. There are also some sketchy scholarly interpolations based on the myth of him killing Uke Mochi, including the idea that perhaps he did so because he was a rival agricultural deity, backed up by the fact that the lunar calendar was used in ancient Japan to calculate harvest and fertility times, that could point toward Fertility, although it's not very firm.

Perhaps my favorite possibility is also from the Nihon Shoki, in which it is mentioned that mortal priest-oracles received an oracular revelation from Tsukuyomi indicating that they should support granting some land to Takamimusubi. Not only is this myth a barrel of fun if you pursue the idea that Takamimusubi is Amaterasu's replacement consort after Tsukuyomi leaves (does he know? is he accidentally supporting his ex-wife's new lover without realizing it? is he supporting him because he's with Amaterasu now and he wants to help take care of her even though she banished him? is this a soap opera?), but it also opens a door that points toward Tsukuyomi being one of those rare Japanese Prophecy or Mystery gods, granting wisdom via moonlight to his constituents. Unfortunately, there's no second myth to go with this first one, but it's still some food for thought.

We haven't restatted the Japanese gods yet, so unfortunately for Tsukuyomi, he remains a mess until we do. But there are a few purview possibilities to pursue for him, if no strong Attribute ones (Charisma for "ruling the night"? What's the "throwing a huge tantrum" Attribute?), so that's something to start on!

Mistakes Have Been Made

Question: Is there any opposition to birth control in the Amatsukami? Because I may have accidentally impregnated Amaterasu while disguised, under Tsukiyomi's orders.

Oh, you wacky kids.

There's no particular prohibition against birth control in Japanese mythology that we know of; certainly they had forms of it in ancient Japan, most commonly "caps" of bamboo that would be placed inside the vagina to prevent sperm from reaching the cervix, although they weren't the most medically advanced technology and results were therefore spotty. Most of the gods in the Japanese myths we have are intending to reproduce because that's one of their cosmic jobs, so the issue hasn't come up, but theoretically they could decide to avoid having any more children and that probably wouldn't be an issue for anybody.

However, if Amaterasu is already pregnant, it sounds like it's too late to worry much about birth control. You're now in the realm of worrying about whether or not abortion is okay, if you want the pregnancy terminated without a birth, or whether adoption or infanticide is okay in cases of illegitimate children.

Unfortunately for you, adultery was a serious offense in Japan (both ancient and modern) and the Kami are likely inclined to punish it severely. If neither you nor Amaterasu are married, that problem's out of play, but illegitimate children are still not going to have a smooth life among the status- and politics-obsessed Japanese gods, who will probably never allow them to rise all that high in the ranks. It's hard enough being a Scion among the Kami, who are very tough sells when it comes to allowing "lower-class" or bastard children to have any kind of status; being the illegitimate child of someone already on shaky footing is hardly going to help that poor kid have a future as much more than a page. Of course, the most dangerous issue there at all is the fact that Amaterasu sure as hell doesn't want an illegitimate child being a smudge on her reputation, so she's likely to take some kind of action - most likely send the child, far, far away and never allow anyone to know about him or her. Infanticide, usually by exposing the baby in the wilderness or otherwise sending it off with no hope of survival (as Izanagi and Izanami did with Hiruko, their deformed leech baby, who they pushed off the coast in a boat), was practiced at various times in Japan's history, but it's unlikely that anyone with Valor will consider that a viable option, and anyway Amaterasu is probably not going to suffer anyone with her imperial blood in their veins to be left to die.

Abortion, surprisingly enough, is probably not an issue; it also was practiced fairly freely in ancient times, although it was more dangerous then, and it was only made illegal comparatively recently in the nineteenth century, when the Japanese government decided that a larger population would be good for the country. Among the divine, all it takes is a little Health boon usage or just normal medical knowledge.

But we don't really know the circumstances surrounding your accidental babymaking here, so we don't know which, if any, of these options might help you out. If you were in disguise and Amaterasu thinks this pregnancy is legit, she probably won't want to take any such action and would consider it an attack on her if you did, and you might want to go on letting her believe that rather than having to out yourself and face her undoubtedly furious retaliation. Political scandal is one of the most important things to avoid as a member of Amaterasu's court, so you may want to just never bring this up and let everyone live happier lives. If it does come up, you may want to take the baby yourself and keep the secret of who its mother is, or else adopt it out to someone who doesn't ask too many questions. If you're below God-level, the baby will be a potential Scion, so it might be a valuable asset to some other deity who can't or doesn't have their own children.

Of course, different gods have different personalities, and those are under the control of your Storyteller, so don't take our word as gospel. Some of them may have a personal problem with birth control or unwanted pregnancy that goes beyond this, and we don't have any real understanding of your situation, so our answers are vague.

This question is so tantalizingly mysterious - all "What do I do?", no "Here's what I already did!"

Far Beyond the Sea

Question: Hey, I know Asia is a distant memory right now, but how would you deal with Susanoo being assigned to Yomi, especially with Izanami's dubious Titan-ness?

Ooh, Susanoo and his underworld connections is one of my favorite things to speculate about in Japanese mythology!

So, for those who aren't up on their Japanese shenanigans: in the Kojiki, when Izanagi assigns Susanoo as the divine ruler of the seas, he begins weeping and wailing with great sadness, so strongly that the rivers and lakes dry up and all the greenery on the mountains withers. When Izanagi asks him what's wrong, he cries that he wants to be with his mother, which makes Izanagi so furious (because remember, he just escaped from Izanami and walled her up in the underworld, and probably his conscience doesn't appreciate this kid bringing it up again) that he says the courtly Japanese equivalent of "Fine, fuck you, then," and banishes his son to the Underworld.

There are a lot of very interesting things going on in this myth. For one thing, it's an interesting issue that Susanoo knows about and misses Izanami at all; while she is said to be his mother in the Nihon Shoki, the Kojiki where this myth is related claims that he was born from Izanagi alone as he purified himself after escaping Yomi. It seems odd that Susanoo, who was born only of his father and has never even met or seen his mother, should even know about her, let alone be so devastated by her absence; most likely this is because of various older traditions being mashed together during the historical period when Shinto was being institutionalized as the state religion, but in mythological terms it leaves a lot of room for Storytellers to play with Susanoo's exact origin and relationships. It's also interestingly touching; when the entire pantheon has rejected Izanami for being a representative of death, decay and impurity, it seems that Susanoo alone finds this unfair in some way, or at least feels for her situation. Since he's the representative of chaos and breakdown himself, his siding with her may be an example of him going against the normal order, symbolized by Izanagi, and aligning himself with powers that are ultimately detrimental to the universe.

But, anyway, Susanoo does in fact get exiled, and he thereafter retains a lot of death and Underworld imagery, despite not being said explicitly to rule a death realm or actually spend any time with his mother. He is often said to have centipedes, symbols of death and decay, in his hair and clothes in other myths, and to occasionally be said to dwell beneath the ground or to have a home in the Underworld (although not often explicitly Yomi). He's clearly related to death in some way, but he's also clearly not considered to be ruling Yomi, which continues to belong to Izanami; so what's he doing?

One of our favorite theories has to do with the mythic land of Tokoyo. Tokoyo (which means literally "the otherworld") is a mysterious magical location where the spirits of blessed ancestors and the dead live in eternal peace and plenty, along with various kami and magical creatures. It is generally considered a land of the dead, but also a place of happiness and mystical powers, with a lot in common with the faraway Irish concept of Mag Mell. Tokoyo is never explicitly said to have a ruler, but one theory is that this is the Underworld that Susanoo administers; not only does it contain the dead, but it is also usually conceived of as a mysterious island floating somewhere in the primordial sea, which is also Susanoo's traditional domain. Under this interpretation, Susanoo and Yomi would both be rulers of Underworlds but not of the exact same realm, with Izanami receiving the vast majority of the dead but Susanoo administering the disposition of particularly worthy, heroic or otherwise special souls after their deaths. And since there's already potential for multiple Underworlds in Japan if you bring in the imported but still influential Buddhist realm of Jigoku, ruled over by Emma-O, multiple destinations for the dead might fit together well in the greater world of Japanese cosmology.

If you don't want to bring another Underworld into it, or just don't like that theory or want to use Tokoyo for something else like a Terra Incognita, you could also consider Susanoo to live in Yomi somewhere, and simply not to be its ruler. He might be one of Izanami's few allies, which could make for some intense political issues, especially if you consider her to be a Titan, and might also be a motivation for his occasional outbursts and attacks on the gods in the Overworld who abandoned her so long ago. After the debacle with Amaterasu and the cave, he's probably not particularly welcome in Takamagahara anymore, and while he descended to earth at Izumo, it's not particularly practical for a god to actually live among mortals for any period of time so he's probably not there. Alternatively, he might not be friends with Izanami; she has a very bad attitude toward the living, and the fact that he stood up to his father might not be enough to overcome her ingrained resentment and misery, so he may be just as careful about going into Yomi as anyone else (albeit probably better at it since he probably has a good deal of Death boons).

Izanagi's banishment of Susanoo does not explicitly say that he is sending him to rule Yomi; in fact, all it says is that he's banished from the abode of the gods, although the implication is that he probably wanted to go see Izanami as a result. His immediate response is to go bother Amaterasu first, though, so where he eventually ends up living when he isn't in the Overworld is sort of up for interpretation.

Lines of Love

Question: Given that sources identify both Tsuki-yomi and Takamimusubi as Amaterasu's consort, how reasonable an explanation is "she was married to both of them, but at separate times?" Or is there some factor that makes that too easy an answer for mythology? (Every time I try to slog through the Nihon Shoki, I pass out and wake up with my cat chewing on my hair...)

But wait, it gets better! Some scholars also believe that Amaterasu's consort may have originally been her other brother, Susanoo, in pre-Kojiki myth, but that this connection fell out of favor and was later replaced by her more famous consort relations. This is mostly based on their joint relation to the later important imperial bloodlines of Japan and their close relationship before his banishment, but it's also more than a little conjecture, so feel free to ignore it if it's giving you even more of a headache than usual.

If you want to go strictly by the texts, Tsukuyomi is the only one officially named as Amaterasu's consort; no one ever outright says she has a formal relationship with Takamimusubi. Takakmimusubi is definitely around, though, and constantly involved with Amaterasu; he calls councils for her, acts as her advisor during them, jointly bestows gifts upon her grandson Ninigi when he goes forth into the World, negotiates with Okuninushi for the disposition of the earth at her side, and generally seems attached to her hip whenever matters of state are at hand. Of course, he could just be a really awesome vizier/seneschal who knocks it out of the park on advising her, but there are moments when he seems almost on an equal level of power with her, or at least able to speak on her behalf. There are also several textual clues that suggest their closeness, including the fact that Amaterasu's son and Takamimusubi's daughter marry in order to give birth to Ninigi; neither's extra parent is ever mentioned, and the Kojiki already has an established pattern of sibling marriage among gods that could be continued here. The emperors of Japan are therefore also descended from both Amaterasu and Takamimusubi, although it's more often the sun goddess who is remembered as their imperial patron in modern times.

Much of the theory of the two being consorts comes from ancient cultural evidence, which is by necessity not very exact because a lot of it involves anthropologists drawing conclusions from scarce evidence or trying to reconstruct ancient thought patterns. Amaterasu's position as the ruler of the cosmos in an otherwise strongly male-dominated pantheon and culture has been debated for centuries; nobody denies that she's in charge, but there's a healthy debate over how that happened, what it means and why her image as a female who is the greatest among powers doesn't translate to a more even-handed treatment of women in the rest of her culture's myths. One of the leading theories is that Amaterasu is a holdover from very ancient religion, before Shinto was codified, written down and officially instated as the country's dominant religion; in such ancient times, communities were co-ruled by a priestess who wielded all the religious power and a politician-consort who wielded all the temporal power. The priestess was the major figurehead, spokesperson and charismatic power, making proclamations backed up by the clout of the gods, while the politician was in charge of advising her on decisions and supporting her to present a unified front to any malcontents. It's not hard to see why some scholars of Japanese history think this is where Amaterasu's power over the pantheon comes from: she may be a vestige of a time when that priestess-politician dual rulership was the norm, and therefore she is the driving power of the pantheon while her politician spouse, Takamimusubi, supports and enhances her.

If you want to consider her to have been married to both of them - and I don't see why you wouldn't, since despite the lack of direct evidence of Takamimusubi we think it's a neat theory and a reasonable mythological choice - you could certainly claim that she married the one after divorcing the other. Timelines in the Nihon Shoki are hard to really pin down, but her spectacular falling-out with Tsukuyomi over the death of Uke Mochi might have marked the end of her first marriage (also to a male consort who perhaps acted in that political capacity for her), whereupon she instead took on Takamimusubi as her consort instead. If you want to throw Susanoo in there, too, you could say that she went from Tsukuyomi, who she banished for angering her, to Susanoo, who she banished for angering her, to Takamimusubi, who presumably tries pretty hard not to anger her if he can help it.

It's not a strong theory (i.e., there's really not much evidence aside from theoretical comparisons to other nearby peoples in Asia, most notably the Ainu), but a few scholars also believe that the ancient matriarchal Japanese culture might have allowed polyandry, the marriage of more than one man to the same woman, in the same way that much later Japanese culture allowed men to have multiple wives. If you like that theory, Amaterasu could have more than one consort at a time without breaking a sweat, just as later Japanese emperors kept multiple concubines.

The Firstborn Heirs

Question: In Japanese mythology, according to the origin myth, Izanagi and Izanami first have two kids when walking around the pillar the wrong way. The first one is Hiruko and the second Awashima. There is some mention of Hiruko eventually surfacing later as a minor god, but I was wondering if there was any other mention of Awashima.

Yep, the two original children of Izanagi and Izanami are all but stricken from the rolls of the Kami. It's not actually the direction that the two deities walked around the pillar that is incorrect, but the fact that Izanami spoke to her husband first. This, according to the Kojiki, was against the natural order of things, so their marriage was tainted and their children cursed. They had to repeat the ceremony, this time with Izanagi speaking first, to straighten it out and be able to be fruitful as deities. Alas for poor Izanami - all she said was, "Wow, you're so handsome!" to her new husband, but that's what happens in ancient mythology when women think they get to be in charge of their own actions.

Alas also for these poor kids, who didn't do anything wrong but were still eternally condemned by their mother's totally unacceptable desire to think she was allowed to talk before a dude gave her permission. Hiruko - whose name means "leech", and who is therefore usually referred to as the Leech Child - was born deformed, unable to stand on his own even when he was three years of age. Various traditions have interpreted this as meaning that he was born without bones, making him a gross, leech-like jelly creature, while others read his name as possibly suggesting that he has no arms or legs, making him even more of a wormy sort of being. When they realize that the kid is never going to be able to play soccer or administer the universe, his parents put him in a boat and shove him off like a tiny unwanted Moses leech into the celestial ocean.

Hiruko never comes back, and in earlier Shinto scriptures it doesn't seem that he was intended to; he's gone because he was impure and unnatural, which in the purity-focused Japanese religion means that he must be removed. However, he was much later syncretized with the figure of Ebisu, one of the Seven Lucky Gods; the boating gods of good times and fun parties likewise come from the sea, and while the rest of them are Chinese imports, Ebisu is the only one said to have originated in Japan. A weird-looking little god, deaf and physically handicapped, who came back from parts unknown in a boat - it's not hard to see why the idea that he might be Hiruko returned sprang up and became so powerful.

But you're really more interested in Awashima, the second child, who is also considered a failure but whose problems are not actually described in the Kojiki. "Awashima" literally means "island of Awa", or possibly "pale island" from the word awai, meaning "pale"; Izanami and Izanagi also created the islands of Japan after correcting their first marriage attempt, and there are a few small Japanese islands called Awa, so it may be that the myth refers to the pair giving birth to a landmass. If that's so, it's hard to tell why that island was a disappointment to everyone, since the real-world islands are pretty normal places.

There's also an Awashima Shrine in the Wakayama prefecture which has a resident protector deity commonly referred to as Awashima or the kami of Awashima; the kami is a female deity who is in a perpetual state of "womens' problems" that make her miserable, and therefore she is banished to the shrine to keep her away from the other kami (probably because things like menstruation are considered impure) and spends her time trying to help ease the suffering of other women when they have uniquely female problems. We don't have any indication that this is necessarily the same Awashima, but if it is, presumably the fact that she's afflicted with lady-issues would be the reason that she was kicked off the official god-roster by her disgusted parents, and her backstory of being banished by the other gods might be a later version of the old story of the original two children being considered failures to be done away with. This second Awashima isn't attested in either the Kojiki or the Nihon Shoki, but is rather a popular figure in shrine worship in that particular part of Japan.

For most Scion games, Awashima probably isn't going to come up very much, considering that s/he vanished immediately after being born in the Shinto scriptures and never comes up again. However, if you want to play with where the missing second child might be - not to mention doing what, and associating with whom - there are a couple of possibilities for folding the lost deity in to the rest of Japanese mythology.

Socializing in the Sky

Are you guys ready for another session of marathon vlogs? Here they come! Today's is about politics and insanity among the gods, who never seem to have getting along near the top of their to-do lists.

Question: From a social perspective, what does it mean to the gods when one god has more associated purviews and/or Epics than another god?

Question: Would it be possible for a god, through either Fate-dickery or Magic or just sheer force of will, to change their modus operandi? I have a game idea that partially revolves around the idea of Odin abandoning his normal methods to try the novel approach of honesty and good faith in order to avert Ragnarok. Is this plausible?

Question: Can you elaborate on the relationship between the Yazata and the Deva? Why do they see each other as enemies?

Question: You always talk about gods leaving the World because of Fatebonds. Why did they stay in the first place? They would have known about Fatebonds during that time. Was the risk just worth the reward?

Question: Would it be accurate to say that pantheons that have more Virtues in common (such as the Aesir and Nemetondevos) would be on better terms with each other than those that have few in common (like the Anunna and Theoi)?

Question: Every god has a rivals and enemies listing on their page, but what does that MEAN to them? To be specific, Odin has enemies - does he hate them, or are they merely names on his "to kill list"? When you say a god has enemies, does that mean hatred and active attempts at murder and sabotage, or something less intense and more passive?

Question: I've got a Scion game coming up where all the PCs are either Kami or Teotl. I was wondering if you had any ideas for ways in which those two pantheons would interact, as I'm currently drawing a blank.

Just be nice, everyone. Is that so hard?!

Political Pantheon Party!

Aha! I bet you thought we forgot to vlog today, didn't you? Shows what you know! Not only did we remember, we actually did a whole pile of vlogs in one day, so that if we end up in a scheduling crunch in the weeks to come, you won't go without answered questions and our cheerful faces.

Question: What would you guys think of a game where Scions deal with a number of NPCs in the world bringing their pantheons back to prominance, all the while secretly guarding Zeus's "successor"?

Question: Why does Hades have Epic Stamina associated?

Question: I'm a little bit intrigued by the Orisha. It's crazy how everyone is married to everyone. How does that really work? Are they a big happy family or what?

Question: I'm STing a game and my scions (of Hel, Hades and Odin) are getting to God soon, and I need some ideas on how to make their rise to God memorable.

Question: My scion of Izanagi is finding himself being attracted to Amaterasu. He blames his attraction on being named the god of the moon (Tsuki-Yomi died), so is this argument valid? Also, should he be disgusted with himself since he is attracted to his sister? Would she be his full or half sister, since Izanagi created her and her brothers?

Question: Hey, I noticed that in your Eastern Promises and Gangs of New York games you only allow your PCs to pick four pantheons that actually had some level of cultural interaction. Just wondering if any other major pantheons on your site that could have that kind of thing going on, like say the Celtic pantheons, for instance?

Question: In your games, when and how did the gods learn that the Titans had escaped? Was there some big explosion in the Underworld? Did they simply slip out unnoticed until someone actually checked and saw that they had flown the coop?

Question: The Aztecs have a god of homosexuality despite their obvious dislike of the concept. How does the rest of the pantheon treat him?

Question: Norse vs. Borgovi? SWEET! But, say Loki tricked Thor and Perun into a room together - what would happen? A SPECTACULAR light show, or lots of drinking? OR something else?

Question: Power and responsibility go hand in hand. And with every great decision comes regret. Regret for what could have been, should have been, and what ultimately was. What do the gods regret?

Today's vlog is about gods, pantheons and related issues of their politics and powers. Happy viewing!

Literally Star-Crossed

Question: Hi! I know the Amatsukami rewrite is some time away but I was curious about something. I've heard that Izanagi is a kami associated with the stars as well as the sky, and the myth of Tanabata is a retelling of his doomed affair with Izanami. Is there anything in your research that would indicate that's true?

Well, it is possible that some people might consider Izanagi a stellar deity. In Japanese myth, the stars were created by Izanagi when he drew the heavenly spear out of the earth at the creation of the world and flung the clots of mud clinging to it into space, so he has a connection to stars in that he created them. We wouldn't consider it a strong enough association to make him a star god, really, though, considering that Izanami also helped with the spear-creations and that Izanagi presumably created everything else that exists in Japan at the same time and we wouldn't think of him as a god of Fertility or Water or Earth, either.

As for the mythology surrounding Tanabata, that's actually imported from China, where it's the well-known tale of the Weaver's Daughter and Cowherd's Son, Zhi Nu and Niu Lang; in at least one version, Zhi Nu is the daughter of the Jade Emperor and the saga is played out as a conflict between celestial gods, although in other places it's a folktale of two mortal lovers kept apart by a Romeo & Juliet style family feud. Tanabata is the Japanese name for the goddess, who is patroness of weavers, while Hikoboshi is the Japanese name of her cattle-aligned counterpart. Kept apart by the decree of her father or whatever other outside forces a given retelling of the myth chooses, the two lovers can meet only once per year, when the stars Altair and Vega that represent them line up.

But we've never heard of Tanabata and Hikaboshi being cognates of Izanami and Izanagi, and we don't know of any reason they'd be connected. Izanagi and Izanami have no similar connotations to the two formerly Chinese gods other than the very tenuous stellar connection of being creator gods, and furthermore the mythology doesn't line up; nobody ever forbade them to get together and in fact their pantheon encouraged them, and once Izanami died and Izanagi failed to retrieve her, there was definitely no interest on either of their parts in having a romantic once-a-year tryst even if they could. You could definitely call their relationship a "doomed affair" if you want to, but it's in no way a similar one to that between Tanabata and Hikoboshi.

However, that doesn't mean the Tanabata myth can't do neat stuff in Japan. You might be able to do some cool stuff with what these Shen are doing being so prominent in Japanese myth and whether or not they're seeking some kind of asylum from their pantheon there, and it might also be interesting to remember that Amaterasu is also a goddess with weaving connotations. She isn't a star goddess, but she and her brother and former consort Tsuki-Yomi are both heavenly deities that inhabit the sky but never touch, and there might be something you could mess with in that parallel situation.

Distinguished Heavenly Gods

Question: So, what gods would you be looking at, if the Amatsukami rewrite won? What direction is Tsukumo-gami going to take? Any changes in the virtues *cough Harmony cough*? Raiden, Izanami and Izanagi - Titans? What is Tsuki-yomi's relationship with his pantheon?

Oh, man, I meant to post this with the recent glut of Discussion of Things On the Poll! The Amatsukami rewrite isn't a frontrunner right now, but hey, maybe the wind will change.

The Amatsukami are a mess in the RAW, as you've no doubt heard us complain many times in the past. Gods that should be there aren't, gods that have no business being there are core members, their PSP is busted, their cosmology is weird, their Titans are nonsensical, and they spend most of their time in our games crying in the corner. We need to fix them ninety ways, and while we are totally excited about them finally getting to shine, the project's been backburnered for a while thanks to John's pantheon-fatigue and the fact that we currently don't have any Japanese-heavy elements in our games so it hasn't been a priority for our players.

Things that we want to tinker with include, in no particular order:

• Pantheon Roster. There are people on here who should never have been playable gods, with Raiden being the most obvious example; he's an ogre-monster who eats people and has never done anything positive in his loud and destructive life. He's most likely only there thanks to name recognition from the Mortal Kombat series, and you can probably guess how legit we think that should be as a justification. Conversely, several major Shinto figures, including Uzume, Inari and Sarutahiko, are mysteriously absent, which we can only assume is because they didn't fit the original pantheon "parameters" that most of the core six fall into or nobody wanted to bring in one of the Kunitsukami and confuse everyone by calling him Amatsukami instead. Regardless, the entire roster needs cleaning up to introduce those gods who deserve spots and get everyone else kicked back out into the Titanrealms where they belong.
• PSP. Tsukumo-gami has a very solidly Shinto idea behind it, but it's a pretty sorry mess of a purview that needs some love desperately. It's very underpowered, for one thing, and pretty blurry about what exactly it does and affects when compared to other powers (can you use it on "inanimate" objects that are still living, like trees? what about inanimate substances that aren't objects, like water or fire? does it infringe on other purviews? when you separate a kami from an item, what the heck are its stats?), neither of which is helping Amatsukami Scions do neat stuff with it. We're also currently questioning its core concept as well; the word "tsukumogami" refers specifically to items that have become old and powerful enough to gain awareness and personality of their own, but Scion allows the use of the purview on any inanimate object, which is a little bit mythically dissonant. Of course, we also wouldn't want the purview to only be usable on museum pieces... unless maybe it was really awesome? The idea of the eight million kami is a potent one, covering the Shinto concept of spirits in everything and the neat way that interacts with Scion's usual setup of things either being gods or mortal, and we'd love to let Scions play with it. But no matter what we do, the conceptual purpose of the purview needs clarification. More neat powers, less confusion, better Japanese-ness!
• Titans. Titans are their own separate project, so this won't be happening all at once, but a lot of the figures on the Amatsukami roster that we'll be removing will probably in turn become Titans. At the same time, their current Titans are something of a clusterfuck; we've already fixed poor Mikaboshi, so he can take his rightful place among the stars instead of being a weird primordial darkness monster from a comic book, but Kaminokaze could also stand to be restored to his actual persona as Fujin, Raiden's equally unpleasant brother.

We probably will also revisit the Virtues, but I'm not sure they need a lot of tweaking, to be honest. I actually love Harmony for them because it dovetails so beautifully with the Shinto ideal of purification and pollution, where rituals and behavior must be carefully observed to preserve the good balance and purity of things and any deviation causes horrible imbalances and problems. It's not the tree-hugging variety of Harmony, but I think it's a good representation of the idea nonetheless. Duty and Valor are probably in there in deference to the samurai ideals of Japan's bushido period, and the first at least I wholeheartedly agree with (jury's still out on Valor, pending more close examination).

As for Tsukiyomi, he'll certainly still be on the pantheon roster, making his surly way across the night skies. His banishment from Amaterasu's presence certainly chafes at him (especially if you happen to follow the version of court mythology in which she was his wife as well as sister), and it probably makes interacting with the entire pantheon difficult, but he's still one of the three August Siblings and deserves the respect that goes along with it. Some of his banishment may actually be ameliorated at the moment, since his skills and presence are probably needed in the fight against the Titans; but then again, maybe not, since his sister is not exactly known for being forgiving or tolerant.

The Amatsukami are not actually in as bad shape as many pantheons; they don't have the total-conceptual-overhaul problem that the Loa did, don't need an entirely new PSP invented like the Aesir and aren't plagued by the character assassination that laid the Aztlanti low. They're just underwhelming at the moment rather than really broken, and need a little spit, polish and loving care.

Dead on Our Feet

Question: Working to create a new Titanrealm of Death and I was interested to see what 'Titans' would call it home and why. Japanese, Norse, Egyptian, and Aztec are of particular interest since its what we have in our game.

Well, good news - we actually wrote a Titanrealm of Death for our most recent pantheon supplement, The K'uh, which is available for free download and might give you some interesting starting places! It starts on page 27 of the PDF and contains Maya, Persian, Hindu and Greek Titan Avatars.

However, none of those Avatars are from the cultures you mentioned - bummer, right? It's actually very difficult to find true-blue Avatars of Death in many mythologies, which is at first glance surprising considering how much humanity tends to be afraid of and unhappy about death as a concept. It's that very fear and dislike that makes it less likely for there to be Titans of Death, however; because death is always the end of mortal life and therefore of supreme importance to humans, it's necessary for there to be gods to oversee it, lending humans the comfort of knowing that someone will take care of them after death, that there are rules, rewards and punishments that make the whole thing make sense. This is why there are tons of death gods, at least one or two per pantheon and in some cases many more, and why conversely there are few Death Titans; human societies don't like death-aligned figures, but they seldom invent ones that don't in some way help or reassure them about the great unknown of the afterlife.

That doesn't mean they don't exist, though! The easiest of your cultures to find one in is actually the Amatsukami, where the terrible figure of Izanami, murdering as many people as her husband creates each day and dragging them down into the miserable depths of Yomi, has many of the hallmarks of a Titan. She's a goddess in the original writeup, and we've gone back and forth on whether she should stay that way or move over to becoming Titanic, but if you want the death-aligned big bad of the Amatsukami, she's obviously it. Unlike most death gods, she doesn't really have any positive side, any things she does to help or safeguard humanity; she's a prison warden who is always looking to add to her prisoners so they can be miserable along with her, and that's a setup perfect for Titanhood. Plus, the tragic story of how she died and ended up as what she is now often lends a lot of emotional resonance to the dealings of gods and Scions with her, and might give you a lot of cool story options. There are other death figures in the Japanese pantheon, most notably Susanoo (who was cursed to become part of the Underworld when he sided with Izanami against his father) and Jigoku (lord of the Buddhist hell, most likely an import of Yama who later took on his own identity as a Japanese deity), but since they do have stories and functions as deities, interacting with the other gods or rehabilitating the dead according to their deeds in life, they're probably better left as gods instead of Titans.

The Norse are not so easy: they have three death people, and they're Odin, Freya and Hel, and none of them are straight-up easy choices for Titanhood. As leader of the pantheon, Odin's pretty clearly out of the question (although sometimes his behavior is downright Titanic, amirite, guys?), and as one of the Vanir prisoners and a major and generally benevolent goddess who features in many important stories, Freya's not a good choice, either. That leaves Hel, who, like Izanami, is not a very nice person thanks to her pantheon shitting on her, but she doesn't have the same Titanic flavor as her Japanese counterpart. Hel doesn't actively do anything to oppose the gods; nobody likes her, true enough, and people are generally afraid to go to her house, but she doesn't attack anyone, doesn't go around trying to kill more humans for her own ends, and doesn't cosmically try to screw anyone, spending most of her time sullenly watching over the kingdom they punted her into. She does try to prevent Baldur's resurrection, but you can hardly blame her for being A) not very inclined to be nice to the Aesir, and B) enforcing the rules of the domain they demanded she take over in the first place. If you don't use Hel, unfortunately there really aren't very many other options among the Norse gods and antagonists; the best other option I can think of is Modgrud, the giantess who guards the bridge to Hel and controls whether or not the dead (or living) are allowed across it, but since she's both fairly minor and also not very antagonistic, I really wouldn't recommend her.

The Egyptians have the opposite problem from the Norse - ten bazillion kajillion death-aligned gods, but almost all of them are benevolent friends to humanity and their pantheon, hardly Titans bent on opposing them. Because the ancient Egyptians were so strongly invested in the idea of the afterlife being a second chance for them if they observed all their death rituals and were judged worthy, there are veritable slews of gods helping take care of the place, from guiding lost souls to performing burial rites to defending them from demons to judging their worthiness to continue to a new life. That doesn't leave a lot of room for deathly gods who are trying to ruin all that, but you do have a few options you might be able to explore nevertheless. The first is Ammit, the terrible crocodile/hippopotamus/lion amalgam creature that is said to dwell in Duat; eternally hungry, she devours the souls of anyone who fails to measure up when weighed against feather of Ma'at, consigning their souls to awful oblivion instead of allowing them to move on. While we use Ammit as an Avatar of the Titanrealm of Destruction, emphasizing her role as the void that utterly destroys, we could also see her as an Avatar of Death representing final, irrevocable and afterlife-less death, something that surely gives most people extreme heebie-jeebies. Ammit is slightly problematic, however, in that she works for (or at least with) the gods, allowing Anubis and Thoth to decide who she gets to eat and doesn't, so you'd need to come up with a backstory reason why she's ditched that job and begun rampaging on her own. The only other suggestion I have for you is a minor god called Ba-Pef, who is believed to have represented the grief and suffering associated with death and who lives in the House of Woe in Duat. Ba-Pef was on our original list for possibilities for our own Titanrealm of Death; we ended up cutting him since he was such a minor god with very little information on him out there, but he does fill a neat death-related niche, so he's an outside option.

Finally, the Aztecs, with a similar lack of useful possibilities. Like most Mesoamerican cultures, the Aztecs had a pretty overwhelming fear and hatred of death and things associated with it, but as a result they set up several gods as goalies to keep dead people from getting out to frighten the living and called it a day. Huitzilopochtli, Tlaloc and other gods who technically control Underworlds are obviously not Titan material, and while Itzpapalotl does oversee the souls of dead infants and miscarriages, she's so strongly tied to the tzitzimime that it would be a pretty weird move to set her up in a Death realm instead of the Stars. The really major scary death figure for the Aztecs is Mictlantecuhtli (and his wife, Mictecacihuatl, who fucntions with him as a unit), but he has the same problems as Hel above - performs the useful function of keeping the dead away from the living, doesn't oppose or endanger humanity or his pantheon, has no particularly evil issues other than being very unpleasant to be around, and only clashes with the gods when they invade his home and try to break the rules of death. He's certainly scary and disliked, so you could decide that he's a Titan, but it's hard to extrapolate much misbehavior out of him when his favorite pastime is staying at home and refusing to not do his job. If you want to get creative, though, you could try going modern and using Santa Muerte ("Saint Death" or "Holy Death" in Spanish) as a new Titan Avatar horning in on the traditional Aztec territories. Santa Muerte is probably actually a figure synthesized from Mictlantecuhtli/Mictecacihuatl and the influence of Catholicism from the invading Spaniards, but wherever she came from she's become one of the most powerful (and frightening, depending on who you ask) cult figures in Mexico, with cults reaching all the way up into the US and down through Central America. If you want to use her as a being in her own right, she could be parlayed into an interesting Titanic figure opposing the old death gods of the Aztlanti, flourishing in worship where they did not.

That's about all I've got to suggest for you, I'm afraid. Death's a very hard one, and I salute you for giving it a good go. In addition to the suggestions above, we also had Iapetus, Greek Titan of mortality and the lifespan, as a possibility on our original list for our Death realm, as well as Mrtyu, Hindu personification of death.

Give Mama Some Sugar

Question: I don't believe the Amatsukami were as much into godly incest thing as some pantheons, but how weird would it be for Amaterasu to marry her Scion? Yes, our game went to a very weird place, which is what happens when you annoy Aphrodite...

Weird on an unimaginable and unacceptable level. First, let's talk about divine incest!

Incest is indeed an accepted practice among many gods, even gods of the Amatsukami, but while we modern folks tend to lump all incest into the same category and call it a day, in a mythological context it's important to understand that there are different kinds of incest, and some were considered acceptable behavior for gods while others were seen as heinous crimes. Sexual relations and marriages often occur between siblings (like Isis and Osiris or Shango and Oshun), uncles/aunts and nieces/nephews (like Hades and Persphone or Nergal and Ereshkigal) or cousins (like buckets of gods in different pantheons).

But while those kinds of familial relationships are fairly commonplace, you will extremely seldom see a parent married to a child, and that's because that particular form of incest is almost universally taboo across all pantheons. While sibling relationships make cosmic sense, whether for preserving a bloodline or because at the beginning of time there simply isn't anyone else to hang out with, parent-child ones usually don't fall into the same category. The relationship between a parent and a child is fundamentally different from that between siblings or cousins, having an aspect of responsibility and dependence that isn't usually present between other relationships, and as a result almost every culture worldwide has developed a major taboo regarding it that filters through to their gods.

While there are a few cases of parent-child marriages in ancient myth, they're almost all at the level of Titans who are so ancient and primordial that they're only anthropomorphized perfunctorily, such as Gaia having children with her self-created sons Ouranos and Pontus. Every other time it occurs, it's strongly criticized within the myths itself; Brahma's pursuit of Sarasvati is responded to with disgust, distress and eventually a curse, Orungan's attempt to marry his mother is so heinous she ended up detonating herself to avoid him, and when Enki sleeps with his daughter (and granddaughter and great-granddaughter, compounding his sin), he is punished for it until he has to beg Ninhursag to save him from death by brain-pregnancy. We don't even need to bring up details when it comes to Oedipus.

When it comes to Amaterasu and the Amatsukami, I'm sure you can see where this is going by now. While there are several cases of sibling incest among them - Izanami and Izanagi, Amaterasu and Tsuki-Yomi, Okuninushi and Suseri-hime - there are none between parent and child. The Japanese had enough problems trying to justify the sibling incest among their gods, which involved a lot of apologetic essays about the gods being forced to marry among their siblings thanks to no one else being available and their simply being above the moral laws that bound humanity, without trying to justify a mother getting it on with her son. The pantheon as a whole would find such a thing absolutely abhorrent and indefensable.

So yeah, Amaterasu marrying her own son would transcend "weird" and head straight off into the stratosphere of "horrifyingly not okay" for pretty much all of the Japanese gods (and most other pantheons, too). Which doesn't mean you can't do it, of course; especially if Aphrodite is vengefully ensuring this massive breach of the pantheon's morals and politics, it's totally possible for Amaterasu to hook up with her Scion. It's just that there will be massive fallout, possibly up to and including her being deposed or slammed in the face with hardcore Justice. No one among the Amatsukami is going to be okay with it thanks to it being the seriously forbidden kind of incest, even if they don't come up with other reasons to be upset about it (which they probably can; Tsuki-Yomi, being her estranged husband, would probably not be pleased no matter who she was marrying, for example).

It's not advisable, is what we're saying. Really, really bad things will happen. Aphrodite has chosen a very good, and very dangerous, vehicle for her revenge on you.

The Dead Walk

Question: I'm brainstorming ideas for reconciling a Titanic Izanami to the Amatsukami, ranging from getting her kids to visit more often to convincing Izanagi to pull a Belili. This is rather broad, but do you have any thoughts to share on attempting to resurrect big-name deities who have 'dead and not loving it' as a big part of their legend?

It is pretty broad, but hey, that doesn't mean we can't take a running tackle at it anyway.

Resurrecting a god, especially one that's been dead a long time, and especially one who's so strongly associated with the idea of death, is no small undertaking. You're looking at something that will need tons of magical mojo from multiple gods, the political sanction of important involved parties (or the political fallout if you don't talk to them first), and the inversion of the balance of the universe, replacing and rewriting who's in charge of life and death and how they interact with their pantheons. That shit is heavy all by itself, never mind that there will also be specific problems and obstacles for various different dead gods that differ and make your headache even worse.

Big-name dead gods fall into three basic categories: gods who died and are stuck being dead in the Underworld (your Baldur, Gugalanna and so forth), fertility gods who are on a revolving door in and out of the Underworld (Persephone, Tammuz, Baal and so on) and gods who died and ended up being in charge of running the place as a result (Yama, Izanami, Osiris, etc). They've all got different problems and challenges, so we'll hit some of the major highlights for each (although I know you're specifically looking at the last case).

Gods who have died and are sad denizens of a normal Underworld are probably the easiest case to handle, actually; they follow the usual Underworld rules for dead folks and can thusly potentially be "rescued" in the usual way ("usual" here meaning "fucking hard and rare", but that's Underworlds for you). Your main challenges are getting the ruler of whatever Underworld they're stuck in to allow them to leave, and, if that doesn't work, figuring out a way to jailbreak them if necessary. The most obvious way of approaching is the classic journey to the Underworld to beg the death god's indulgence to give you back your lost god, asking for them to allow the dead deity to go free. When you do so, you're looking at probably needing A) a really great reason that the death god will consider breaking the rules for you, and B) a really great bribe to make sure they get something out of it. If you're lacking either, most death gods will turn you down without blinking. Finally, you can also try to get some other god with power over death to come in and take control of the dead god's shade, but that's possibly the most explosively dangerous option - do you really want to see what happens when Osiris rolls into Hades' house and starts opposing his rule?

Dying fertility gods, which is the scholarly shorthand for "gods who die on a regular basis to illustrate the fertility of the earth in different seasons or periods of drought/abundance", are a much more difficult issue. The recurring cycle of their deaths is a major and important part of their Legend, and disrupting it might have serious consequences for both the World and the politics among the pantheon they belong to. If Persephone stops going to Hades every year, you're going to have a violently upset Hades on your hands, and if Tammuz stops going to Irkallu every year, that means Ereshkigal may rise up and try to reclaim Ishtar. There's also the problem of most of them dying for different reasons and because of different events in their past, so some may be easier to stop than others; Hades notwithstanding, it might not be hard to keep Persephone from going down to the Underworld if Demeter interferes or psychopomps refuse to take her, but Baal ends up down there because he's prone to getting in fights with his death-god rival Mot and dying, and stopping a thunder god on a rampage seldom goes well for anyone involved. Some of them may not want to be stopped from dying, which is a further layer of difficulty, and you may just not be able to convince Persephone she doesn't want to go be queen half the year or that Adonis should abandon his devotion to Aphrodite to avoid getting shivved this year. And, finally, if you do succeed in breaking that cycle, what happens to the World? Does winter never come again if Persephone never dies, and what does that do to the Greek lands and the people who live in them? Do Lebanon and Syria never experience drought again if Baal never goes to Nepesh, and if so, are their dry, sandy shores going to end up sliding into the sea because they were never meant to be constantly inundated with moisture? Even without the probable extreme ire of the death gods who aren't getting their perennial visitors, those myths have a direct effect on the World and Scions attempting to stop their normal course may need to figure out how to run some serious-scale damage control.

And, finally, there are the folks like Izanami, who died and ended up taking ownership of the deathrealms and the very concept of death itself. Some of these gods may be happy to be where they are (Yama, for example, would probably keep doing his job even if he was technically allowed to quit), but often they're stuck down there because of banishment or punishments levied on them. Hel, Izanami and Osiris are seriously not pleased about their lots in unlife, but thanks to the laws and barriers of their pantheons, they're unable to do anything about it but make the best of the situation by ruling where they can. The most major obstacle to getting them back is just convincing the rest of the pantheon to allow it, which is going to involve political shenanigans on a cosmic level; after that point, you also have the extremely difficult job of finding someone to replace them, because the last thing anyone wants is an Underworld with nobody at the wheel. And if you manage all that, what will the former death god be as a member of the pantheon proper, and what new roles and powers might they take on, and how will they be doing that, and what will it mean to the other gods who are now rubbing elbows with them?

This is a lot of stuff. And those are just the in-game, non-mechanical concerns, which are already more than enough to make most Scions go cross-eyed. There's also the extreme power required to mechanically pull this off.

In terms of what you actually do to resurrect a god, occasionally it can be as "easy" as journeying to the Underworld, finding them and giving them the power to escape themselves; gods with Ultimate Stamina, Samsara or Circle of Life may be able to resurrect under their own power if you can just give them the juice to do it, meaning that rituals or quests to help them out with that may eventually bear fruit. If they don't have a get-out-of-Hades-free card, then you're looking at needing, at bare minimum, a god who can blow The Reaper to resurrect them and a god who can bust off The Savior to help them form and inhabit a new body, and depending on who the god is and what circumstances surround their deaths, you may also need someone to blow The Wyrd to work on disentangling their Fate from its current dead-end path. It goes without saying that if you and your buddies aren't Legend 12, you're going to have to offer some serious incentives to get other gods in your corner here. There are also occasionally very powerful relics in various cultures' mythology that may be able to resurrect the dead, so you may end up going on quests to find and figure out how to use those if everything else is failing. And, finally, you may be able to perform an Underworld trade, letting one god return to life while another dies in his place, but finding willing victims for such things is probably not any easier than getting a cabal of gods willing to blow at least 30 Legend each on your problem.

This is a lot of work and it's very daunting, but don't despair; it's still possible, and in fact the PCs in our games have several times managed to resurrect dead gods through their efforts. Geoff's band managed to help Quetzalcoatl return to life by providing him enough rituals and sacrifices that he could resurrect himself after his ill-fated battle with Ryujin, and Aurora brokered an impressive trade-one-god-for-another deal that not only saved a dead goddess (sort of, after a lot of work) but had the interesting side effect of getting Hel to ban her from the Underworld permanently. It's totally doable, but, like most really important things in the Scion world, it's doable only through intense effort and acceptance of equally intense consequences.

Edit: Oh, hey, apparently your question was about Titans, not gods, and I totally ignored that because I'm competing with John for title of Worst Blogger Ever. In addition to all the jazz up there, you might want to check out this old post about converting Titans into gods.

A Square Peg

Question: Hey, John and Anna. I wanted to ask you if you believed that Marishiten has any place being in the Amatsukami? She is a Buddhist and all, and it seemed that White Wolf just threw her in the Scion Companion. What's your opinion on the matter?

Hey, there! We've actually talked about Marishiten before, so I'm going to direct you on over to the previous blog post on the subject.

It's been a little while since we talked about Buddhism, but it's worth noting here that a god being Buddhist does not mean they shouldn't be allowed in a pantheon. Buddhism is a cross-cultural religious phenomenon that involves a lot of gods, and it would be just plain wrong to pretend that Buddhist gods weren't vibrant and important deities worshiped alongside the gods of Hinduism, Shinto, Bon, Shenism and everything else the eastern countries has to offer. Marishiten certainly isn't Shinto, but she is thoroughly Japanese, and it makes much more sense to put her in with the Japanese gods than in some weird, cobbled-together pantheon of Buddhist gods from eight different cultures.

Family Feud

Question: Hello. I'm curious. How would you deal with an Amatsukami Scion who tried in-game to reunite the pantheon? Such as getting Izanagi and Izanami back together or fixing the rift between Amaterasu and her brothers? How do you envision that going?

Well, in our games right now, that would be a pretty vast undertaking. Japan has sustained some serious damage, and I'm not sure where we would even advise them to start. When Ryujin and Susanoo are the major powers in charge of the pantheon, it becomes clear that everything has gone horribly wrong.

For those not stuck in our crazy post-Ragnarok hellscape, things are arguably easier! But definitely not easy. Trying to change a pantheon's political landscape is never easy, even for people who are rocking Ultimate social Attributes.

While this is one of those questions that's too big for a really thorough answer, we can still tell you some places to start. The most major thing to remember is that this is possible, but that there's no magical perfect solution that the Scions just have to find and then succeed with. There are probably many, many ways to go about doing this and just as many outcomes, both good and bad, and both what a Scion does and how she does it will influence the results.

The first step is probably just convincing some or all of these gods that they even want to be reconciled in the first place. If you perform the mother of all diplomatic apologies on Tsukuyomi's behalf and then he stands up and spits in his sister's face, well, that particular plan failed despite your awesomeness, simply because he wasn't on board with it. The Amatsukami are very structured and court-oriented, which means that there are multiple layers of politics, politeness, ritual and ceremony you have to go through just to talk to them meaningfully, and anyone trying to serve as a liaison between two gods will be doing double duty when it comes to perfecting their political clout. If you approach it the wrong way, one or both gods may be offended - at each other, at the idea, at you - or may get the wrong idea. You might end up widening the rift instead of closing it if you don't handle their delicate sensibilities just right.

A Scion will also need to figure out under what terms these reconciliations are happening; is Susanoo coming back to humbly beg Amaterasu's forgiveness? Is Izanagi coming to call upon his children for their aid against his estranged wife? Who's doing the reaching out and why make a massive difference to how things will probably go, so make sure you know whether you're trying to spin this as Izanami wanting to return to the children she loves so much, Susanoo wanting her brought home because he feels she's been treated unfairly, or Amaterasu decreeing she should be penned up on the Heavenly Reed Plain where she can keep an eye on her. The same outcome, but three very different ways of going about it.

Once you've figured out who you want to get talking and gotten at least one of the gods involved on board to help you out (or at least not actively sabotage the proceedings), it's time for the actual hard work: how do you get these people to like/tolerate/not scream at each other when they've been busy doing the opposite for centuries? Apologies and gifts are a good start and some favors or magical trinkets never hurt when it comes to getting a god to play nice, but in the case of these extremely volatile and entrenched relationships, just bringing candy and flowers clearly isn't going to cut it. Just finding out what a god wants most is a whole adventure on its own, possibly involving calling upon Prophecy or Mystery (or those who control them) and immersing yourself in the world of political intrigue and influence-brokering just to figure out what would make it worth it for these guys. There are a ton of ways that each relationship could go, but we suggest any of the following:

• If you want to get Izanagi and Izanami back together: finding a way to resurrect Izanami certainly wouldn't hurt, though doing so would no doubt be insanely difficult and leave you with the question of who's running things down below if she leaves. Convincing Izanami to stop murdering all of Izanagi's creations would probably make him more kindly inclined toward her, but what's in it for her? Izanagi making some kind of pledge to deal with Izanami's ugliness and/or respect her authority would be nice, but is that enough after their centuries of estrangement? Can you get their kids to stage a pantheon-wide intervention or something?
• If you want to get Amaterasu and Susanoo on speaking terms again: Susanoo will have to practically shit a mountain of gold for Amaterasu to be willing to deal with him, so your job is to figure out what that gold is and how to get him going. You could try appealing to reason for Amaterasu, pointing out that Susanoo's power is sorely needed by the pantheon and they'd do better cooperating, or you could go the other direction and try to convince Susanoo to get his grovel on, threatening him with Amaterasu's wrath. Justice that could enforce binding oaths of behavior on Susanoo would go a long way, but is he going to be willing to give those oaths under those terms, and is the risk that he'll break them and render himself useless at a critical moment worth it?
• If you want to get Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi to share the sky again: Not gonna lie, this one is practically impossible. You'll have to find a way to convince both of them to come down from their morally offended ivory towers (that or convince one of them to suck it up, but how likely do you think that is?) and make nice. If Tsukuyomi could help reform Uke Mochi, the original cause of his fall from favor, that might help, so is the long, hard road of trying to bring a Titan Avatar back into the pantheon the right call here? What about the old rumors of the siblings being consorts - do you want to bring that up, and will it help if you do? Since day and night are so incompatible, can one or both of these gods get a new role that allows them to play nice, and what would that look like?
• If you want Susanoo and Izanagi to make up: I'm pretty sure you have to accomplish the first bullet point to get this to happen. So... good luck, then.

Of course, even if you do convince some gods to kiss and make up, there's no guarantee that they'll stay that way; Amaterasu and Susanoo, in particular, have calmed down and dealt with one another in the past only to explode in fiery sibling offense again later. If you really want pantheon-wide harmony, you're going to have to do a lot more than just getting gods back together. You're going to have to give them reasons to stay together, and play nicely, you guys, which may be just as difficult (or, more probably, a lot more difficult). You'll also want to keep in mind that the battle lines in this or any other pantheon are more complicated than God A versus God B, and some of these gods' allies (or enemies) may not want to see them reconciled and may actively go out of their way to stop you, while others will remain angrily offended on their friends' behalf even if said friends decide to let it go. It's hard enough to fix one relationship schism among the divine, but the more of them you try, the more likely it is that things you do to help one group will just piss off another.

Not that any of this should stop a Scion who wants to go for it, of course. Epic diplomacy is a totally valid thing to pursue, and the rewards and legendary deeds that might come out of the attempt, even if it doesn't succeed, will no doubt be well worth the investment. As with almost everything in Scion, whatever you want to do might be incredibly difficult, but it's probably not literally impossible. If a PC can try to rewrite the destiny of an entire country or destroy a planet with her fury, she can probably give getting mom and dad to sit down with a marriage counselor a shot.

Parents on the Loose

Question: Say Izanami and, hey, maybe Izanagi, too, decided to jump ship and follow the siren call of Titanhood. What would happen to the rest of the pantheon? Yomi? Their existing Scions?

Ah, the political panic and changing landscapes of gods that turn out to be traitors. The effects always depend on who the gods in question are and what's going on at the exact time they defect, but it's always a big deal!

In all technicality, nothing would happen to the rest of the pantheon. Izanagi and Izanami may be the creator gods who originally parented them, but they're not the rulers of the pantheon and their departure won't have any direct effects. Amaterasu will still be the queen of the gods, her siblings and lesser subjects will still remain in control of their normal areas of influence, and nobody's going to suddenly stop existing or lose their powers or anything.

After that point, however, things get interesting. If Izanami's out of the picture, nobody's running Yomi anymore, which leaves the mortals under the Amatsukami's care without anywhere to go once they've shuffled off their mortal coil. Yomi itself might or might not remain stable, and the pantheon might have to reroute them to Susanoo's Underworld, the mysterious and seldom-frequented island of Tokoyo; they also might have to allow Emma-O, the god of the Japanese Buddhist Underworld, to take on the largest burden of souls, which is further complicated if you consider Emma-O to be the same figure as Yama of the Devas (who is probably his basis). It's also possible that Izanami might retain her control over Yomi after she defected, meaning that not only was the place not doing its job but it might actually become a very present danger, turning the souls of the dead and the normal creatures living there into Titanspawn scourges.

Another question is what, exactly, they would go become Titans of. Izanami's association with death and determination to destroy more life than her husband can create make her obvious to be part of a Titanrealm of Death if you're using one, but Izanagi's more nebulous. As a creator god whose mission statement is to populate the world with people faster than his wife can kill them, he's aligned most closely with fertility and health concepts, but neither is super strong. The original Titanrealm Terra in the books might be a good fit, since it includes the ideas of birth and new life, but if you're using closer to our Titanrealm setup you may want something more closely aligned with Health or even Creation. Izanami's deathiness is easy as an antagonist behavior already - she's not a very pleasant lady - but Izanagi's destructive Titanhood is probably more like a loss of all moderation, overpopulating the earth with an unending flood of people and causing starvation, poverty and violence to skyrocket from the overcrowding.

As for their Scions, on the surface it's mostly the same story as the rest of the pantheon. Technically, nothing will change for them; a god becoming a Titan doesn't retroactively turn their children into Titanspawn or anything, and they would remain full-blooded Scions of the Amatsukami just as they'd always been. But they would have a lot of problems of loyalty; not only would they be in an uncomfortable situation with their pantheon, all of them scrutinizing them and wondering if they might follow their parents into the realm of evil jerkness (or even preemptively taking them out in case they're considering it), but the newly-minted Titans may also try to take their children with them, calling upon them to prove their loyalty to their divine parents by becoming minions of the Titans themselves. It's always uncomfortable being a Scion thanks to having to deal with different gods pulling you in ninety directions in their influence wars, but it's even worse when your parents are also the incarnation of world-destroying antagonism.

All this is barely scratching the surface of what can happen when a god (or two!) goes Titan, but so much depends on when they go, why and who supports them that it'll always vary for every game and situation. The consequences are always huge, long-lasting and far-ranging, though - if it seems like a major problem might occur, it probably will. Go nuts, because they will.

Man in the Woods

Today, John goes out into the woods and vlogs alone, like the man of nature he obviously is, to answer a bunch of questions like some kind of crochety forest troll. I hope you're ready for his manly beard and masculine robe and hat combo.

Question: In Follower Upgrade, you mention having a list of adjusted templates for Creatures and Followers. Would you please post it? It doesn't need to be a beautiful PDF, I would gladly take a Google Doc or .txt!

Question: Just how is marriage structured in the Orisha pantheon, and by extension the Yoruba? It seems that everyone is married to everyone else, both male and female, and that the women are pretty much equal to the men unless Shango is wailing on them.

Question: Did you ever see the History Channel's "Clash of the Gods"? And if so, what did you think?

Question: Do all dogs go to heaven? Do animals have souls? And most of all, how do I get spectral wolves to do my bidding?

Question: Have you ever considered scaling the Legend point gains from Raise Your Glass, making it usable more than once per day or in the presence of people who have seen you use it already? I understand why the limits are what they are, but I think the knack would still be balanced (maybe even a little fairer, since one Legend doesn't seem like much of a reward at late Demigod or God) if any of those were removed.

Question: Mictlantecuhtli is presented in the Scion RAW as a completely evil misanthrope, that apparently only exists to torture his own Scions and everyone else for that matter. Since you guys deal with a lot of Aztec politics in games, I just wanted to ask how you characterize him?

Question: Any players thinking of creating a new Orisha PC for your next game?

Question: We know a lot about your god game, but what can you tell us about your other two games? Still hush-hush?

Question: Is stunting pretty much limited by your own imagination (in conjunction with the rules)?

Question: In your game, what did Odin do to make Amaterasu his enemy? Was it because of the Aesir assault on Japan, and what's up with that?

Question: Does your PSP count as a Birthright that takes up one of your five Birthright points?

Question: In a game that's all about smashing monsters, what good way is there to play a character with the Pacifist Nature?

Question: Could a character use high levels of Epic Manipulation to convince mortals that he is really great at a purview and gain Fatebonds from those mortals (assuming he spent Legend around them)? Like, if he tells great tales (lies) of destroying entire cities and civilizations with Fire when he has actually never used the Fire purview? If this does not work, how is it different from mortals misconstruing an event they see a PC perform from one purview to another and Fatebinding based on that?

Question: What kind of asks do you reject or refuse to answer?

That was delightful. I don't have much extra to add except that if you're the question-asker who wanted to know about Epic Manipulation and Fatebonds, there are also a couple of old posts here and here that might also help.

Japanese Jambalaya

Question: I know that the Amatsukami Overhaul is long ways away, but I wondered about what rough ideas you guys had. Seeing Inari would be pretty interesting.

Well, you're right. It's a long way off, so we don't have any formal plans or details to share with you. But we do know a lot of neat stuff we're planning, and we also love bulleted lists of the things we want to do! Look, here's one now!

• Remove obvious Titans from the playable god roster. Raiden is the most obvious culprit; he really shouldn't be anywhere near polite god society, and was probably just included because of his pop culture incarnations, particularly in video games. Izanagi and Izanami are also possible departees, though we won't be sure until we've had a chance to do more research and make some calls.
• Add missing playable gods who should be represented. Several of the most major Japanese gods of myth and legend are mysteriously absent from the current roster; off the top of our heads, we're considering Inari, Sarutahiko, Uzume and Tenjin. We might or might not run across others who should get consideration to make the cut.
• Overhaul Tsukumo-gami. Alas, the purview is one of the weakest left; it has a good basic idea but little variation and creativity across its boons, and the powers themselves tend toward underwhelming and inconsistent. We want a purview that makes people excited to play Amatsukami Scions, and Tsukumo-gami needs more work before it'll be there.
• Reassign a Titan antagonist that makes sense. Amatsu-Mikaboshi is a badass, but he's certainly not their biggest problem and he's blatantly not a Titan of Darkness, a characterization we can only assume comes from the Marvel comics portrayal of him. We're currently thinking of possibilities involving storms, impurities, death and other nastinesses, but we don't have a specific plan yet. We just know that Soku-no-Kumi ain't it.
• Fix these associated powers. Holy shit, Raiden has Guardian, what is even going on?

Inari certainly deserves better than the weird lesser immortal status that the books place him in, though I can't say for sure whether or not he'll end up a full Legend 12 playable god. The project's too far in the future for us to have any details yet, so we really won't know any more until we're finished with the things we're buried in right now.

Not Quite Homegrown

Question: What do you think of Susano-o siring (or adopting) a Caucasian or Caucasian-looking scion to piss off his sister and pantheon?

We think it's as valid a beginning for a PC as any! Scions are always embroiled in divine politics just thanks to existing, and unfortunately a lot of them have a lot of ancient prejudice - against their race, sex, habits and morals - to manage as they try to make their mark on a pantheon as a new young god. We had a mixed Caucasian Amatsukami Scion in one of our games, in fact - the ill-fated Sora Sato - who spent a lot of his time trying to overcome his halfbreed heritage to serve his people.

Susano-o is certainly a pain in the ass, and he has a long and glorious history of irritating Amaterasu whenever the opportunity arises; this is a lot lower-scale than his previous pranks, but he may be "behaving himself" thanks to the pressures of the war against the Titans. It's no stretch that he might sire a Scion with mixed blood to annoy her, knowing she wouldn't be able to turn down the help but would look down her nose at the kid, or that he might just not care about her rules and have children with anyone he feels like, making it even more likely that he has a lot of biracial children running around. Remember that it's not "racism against white people" the Japanese have going on, but an attitude of "superiority over all non-Japanese people", so they're just as likely to snub a child who's half black, half Native American, or even half Chinese (because believe you me, no Japanese god is going to think that the Chinese are remotely the same as their own chosen people). Anyone who isn't Japanese is fair game for discrimination here, though of course it will vary from god to god, with some less likely to care about a Scion's mortal parentage than others.

The PC, of course, will have a lot to handle growing up in such a hotbed of hierarchy, rules, expectations and politics... but then again, that's the life of every Scion of the Amatsukami.